The
most dazzlingly poetic pictures ever created - Leonardo's three
great portraits of women all have a secret wistfulness. This
quality is at its most confrontational inGinevra
de' Benci's (Set I, Code: LEO004)self-absorption.

Ginevra
de' Benci
shows that haunting, almost unearthly beauty peculiar to Leonardo.
(Unfortunately Leonardo did cut about 1/3 size of this painting.)

The
beautiful curls of her hair are set against her pale flesh, the surface of
the paint was smoothed by the artist's own hands.

The
young woman looks past us with a wonderful luminous sulkiness. Her eyes,
sometimes nearly to make eye contact with you, but move away when you try
to convince it, sometines it seem to narrow as she endures the painter.
Her lips are set in an unforgiving sensitive line, her proud and perfect
head and neck, her gleaming forehead (one of the most gifted intellectuals
of her time). The thin veil of her upper bodice and the delicate flushing
of her throat. All showing the perfection of form.

The
desolate waters, the mists, the dark trees, the reflected gleams of still
waves, all these surround and illuminate the sitter.

She
is totally flesh and totally impermeable. What she is truly like she
conceals; what Leonardo reveals to us is precisely this concealment, a
self-absorption that spares no outward glance.